Not all jobs in the shop are fine art furniture. Sometimes, I take on odd jobs that are about as far afield from that sort of work as possible. But, even if it isn't the most creative work, when faced with a challenge I get to learn something new. One is never done learning and taking on these sorts of jobs offers new things to learn and new ways to solve problems. A friend asked that I repair some oak chairs the bottoms of which have been split and splintered due to having casters inserted into them. Repeated use of a less than excellent addition to the original design has yielded some real problems! (click on images to enlarge)   You can see the leg ends are trashed! My repair solution is to cut off the damaged part and create a new piece (this will have to be done on all four legs of the two chairs) that has a sort of dowel-end on it. I will drill a hole in the cut off leg the size of that dowel-end and insert it. "X" marks the spot for the hole to be drilled. With the long grain to long grain [...]